I saw Spider-Man chasing Lex Luther in the Batmobile. He was using the Elder wand to summon the power of the Dark Side. I was eating a cheeseburger made out of chicken mcnuggets at the time.

It's all true, despite the glaring inconsistencies.

Perhaps. But I was more thinking about something along the lines of Istanbul. If we weren't aware of all of its names, they being lost to us, and two people mentioned two cities, who were aware, but it wound up they were the same place after all. I don't think this is the case in the gospels but I think this is the apology. So it amounts to creating an inconsistency, to make the report legit, but it's not an actual inconsistency but a lack of knowledge on our part. Having your cake and eating it too.

Use of interpretation and opinions is what confuses many about Christianity today.
Has Christianity not been controlled and "taught" by thousands of false preachers for hundreds and hundreds of years to what it has become today therefore much of what most have learned/experienced is that false presentation of the Bible.
I don't blame any of you for how you may feel or what you've learned and experienced with what Christianity and the Bible (taught by false preachers) is and what it's become. It's not surprising that I'd be thrown into the same category because you may have "heard it all before" but have those past preachers and religions base everything strictly off the Bible without their own interpretations and opinions? We're you able to ask and receive answers from these preachers and priests regarding the Bible?

Any comments on psalm 148:7?

"Praise the LORD from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps "

The bible mentions dragons a number of times. Are there dragons?

Oh, nvm. LF already covered dragons. How about talking donkeys? Do we have those in reality? If not, then what the hell is the bible talking about?

I'm simply a member of the Church of Christ. We are Christian and don't believe in the Trinity. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God (Matt. 3:17) and that Christ is a man and not God or a God-Man as Christ stated himself (John 8:40) as well as the Apostles (1 Tim. 2:5; Matt. 1:18).

We're not a denomination, cult or sect and do not follow this Nicene Creed you mentioned. This is a religion that worships the Almighty God strictly based on His teachings recorded in the Bible with no opinions involved.

No problem, didn't take it as being taken apart and I hope this answers your question.

Hi Jojo! I was a member of the Church of Christ for almost 25 years before deconverting within the past five years. Although I was raised Catholic, in my twenties - even as I started to drift toward unbelief - I learned about the Restoration Movement of the early 19th Century. The idea of stripping away all human additions and selective interpretations and to let the Bible speak for itself really appealed to me. The Restorationists, like others before them and since, sincerely believed that Scripture would make all things clear if only it were given the chance. Unfortunately they were wrong. Scripture speaks with a forked tongue. It shows us different and incompatible pictures of ‘God’. It shows the evolution of theism from the polytheism of the early Old Testament to the monotheism of the post-Babylon period. You can see the evolution of both Hell and Satan all the way through from Genesis to Revelation. And many theists’ picture of Hell comes not from scripture at all but from the medieval Dante’s Inferno. The New Testament can't even agree with itself as to whether Jesus is going to return in the lifetime of the writers. The fact that you and @Christforums have such sharp but sincerely held differences on important aspects of Christianity speaks volumes. I was attracted to the Church of Christ because I wanted to know the truth. I gradually realized, but only lately admitted, that the truth is that scriptures are human beings’ attempts to make sense of the world and all that is in it, nothing more, nothing less. They got some things right about human nature: there is wisdom among the pages of scripture. So I’d say to the Restorationists: you tried, you really did, but it just doesn’t add up. The Bible is evidently no more the word of God than the Quran or any other holy book. And letting the Bible ‘speak for itself’ gets you the plethora of denominations that emerged after the Vatican lost its monopoly on interpretation and people were able to read it for themselves. The Reformation created more confusion than the ‘Lord’ did at the Tower of Babel.

Perhaps. But I was more thinking about something along the lines of Istanbul. If we weren't aware of all of its names, they being lost to us, and two people mentioned two cities, who were aware, but it wound up they were the same place after all. I don't think this is the case in the gospels but I think this is the apology. So it amounts to creating an inconsistency, to make the report legit, but it's not an actual inconsistency but a lack of knowledge on our part. Having your cake and eating it too.

mwc

I don't know anything about Istanbul; but here's a nice picture of me and Redneck Jr. in Constantinople:

I celebrate Easter the way it should be celebrated -- as an astronomical event, on the vernal equinox instead of some daft formula involving full moons and Sundays, and with egregious excesses of chocolate.

(It's only fair, as it's My holiday anyway. How are you gentlemen!! All your Easter are belong to us.)

So did I! That’s hilarious. What are you younger than me redneck? I’m 42.

It depends on whether you use a literal interpretation of age or take a reformist view. Literally, I'm a few years older than you (45). But, if it's true that you're only as old as you feel/act/think, then my age varies from day to day.

"Christianity" is too broad to be a cult, IMO. I think we like to apply terms like cult by analogy where what we really mean is something like "cults are bad, and <this> is bad, so therefore <this> is like a cult". And there might be some legitimate points of analogy between whatever <this> is and actual cults. But I'm not sure it's that useful to stretch the term to be broad enough to apply to an entire world religion with a billion adherents. Individual sects or groups can be cults. The religion as a whole can encourage certain modes of thinking which share features in common with the modes of thinking encouraged by cults. But cults have other features (charismatic leadership, tight social control of specific groups of people) that won't apply to a religion as a whole.

But LF was just making a good joke about William's use of the word "cult"

"Christianity" is too broad to be a cult, IMO. I think we like to apply terms like cult by analogy where what we really mean is something like "cults are bad, and <this> is bad, so therefore <this> is like a cult". And there might be some legitimate points of analogy between whatever <this> is and actual cults. But I'm not sure it's that useful to stretch the term to be broad enough to apply to an entire world religion with a billion adherents. Individual sects or groups can be cults. The religion as a whole can encourage certain modes of thinking which share features in common with the modes of thinking encouraged by cults. But cults have other features (charismatic leadership, tight social control of specific groups of people) that won't apply to a religion as a whole.

But LF was just making a good joke about William's use of the word "cult"

I suppose if it gets big enough , it cant really be a cult. I agree we like to use the word cult as a pejorative.